As part of our commitment to privacy and transparency, we’re updating our Privacy Policy for Cloudup.

“Your privacy is critically important to us.” These are the first words of our Privacy Policy, and words we live by when designing and building our products.

Starting on September 24, 2018, Cloudup will be covered in our Privacy Policy for the products and services from us, the folks at Automattic. No more fragmenting: We’re retiring Cloudup’s separate Privacy Policy — our privacy practices should be straightforward and easy to understand, so now you only have to understand one.

Here are some of the other updates you’ll see:

• Our Privacy Policy includes real-world, concrete examples to give you a clearer picture of how we collect and use personal information.  
• We provided more information, in the Choices section, about how you can limit and control the data that you provide to us when you use our services.
• There’s also added information about your data protection and privacy rights, how long we keep information, and how we handle transfers of personal data outside the EU.

Our new Privacy Policy will take effect on September 24, 2018. We’re announcing the update now, to give you time to take a look at it.

If you continue to use our services on or after September 24, 2018 you acknowledge that your use will be subject to our new Privacy Policy.

And we’d love it if you follow us on privacy.blog for more information about privacy and transparency at Automattic.

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Although we updated the Privacy Policy, our core values remain unchanged: We strive to be fully transparent. We help protect our users from overreaching government demands for information. We keep the data we have a reason to keep. We are thoughtful about how we collect, use, and share personal information. And your content belongs to you.

We know that Terms of Service updates can be scary, but this one’s not! We worked hard to ensure that our new terms are simple and straightforward, so we’re happy to reveal that it’s 70% shorter.

The important details

• The new Terms of Service apply immediately for anyone who signs up for a Cloudup account on or after May 15, 2015.
• Existing Cloudup users have 30 days to review the new Terms of Service and decide whether or not to accept them. If you agree to the new terms, it’s simple — continue to use Cloudup! If you don’t agree to the new terms, you must stop using Cloudup.

Please give it a read, and feel free compare it to the previous terms. You won’t find any significant changes, and as always, your content remains yours!

Once upon a time, I elaborated on the magical world of Cloudup direct links. We’ve since introduced enhancements to direct links, which make sharing with Cloudup more secure and more robust than ever.

Cloudup direct links are now first-class citizens, with their very own top-level domain, cldup.com. With the implementation of this new domain, Cloudup lets you upload, hotlink, and serve any type of asset, including HTML, XML, and SVG securely and directly.

Let’s take a look

Cloudup links usually look something like this: https://cloudup.com/cI2ukH00HZ8. This sets the item in a good-lookin’ chrome and allows you to add more items into the same stream for a nifty sharing experience.

In some cases, however, you’ll want to grab the direct link to a file and share it or embed it without giving viewers access to the entire stream (take a look at our post on direct link usage for use cases & how to’s). When you head to the direct link to the item linked above, it will look like this: https://cldup.com/iikcNfbwc06.gif.

Added benefits

Hosting the asset on a different domain with a unique ID allows us to serve content that wouldn’t be as secure otherwise, like HTML, XML, and SVGs, which can run sneaky, potentially malicious scripts if not handled properly.

Now, sharing the direct link to hosted HTML, XML, or SVGs will display your content beautifully and safely. Here’s an HTML example for your viewing pleasure! https://cldup.com/EEW9mvpe1P.html

I dropped the HTML & inline CSS bouncy cube (crafted by the wonderful Bennett Feely on CodePen) into Cloudup and simply hit the direct link to share the fun animation in this example. Props to Bennett for sharing his work with the world.

Keep on sharing on, and enjoy the power of direct links!